Call it Green or just good Town Planning

Many principles of green design are not advanced, high tech secrets. In fact, most are simple, and fairly time tested approaches. A recent trip to Finland showed some of these in practice. The interesting thing is that many of these measures have been in place for years in Finland and elsewhere in Scandinavia, under the rubric of town planning. On my recent trip I observed Finnish towns of even modest size (<10,000 people) encouraging density in their centers with low rise apartments. This in turn justified infrastructure such as parks, playgrounds and squares. Even suburban areas near cities featured dense development allowing the foregoing amenities. And bicycle paths, which do double duty as ski tracks in winter, were everywhere, even in the countryside, many kilometers outside of towns.  American cities of corresponding size would have few, if any of these features. Yes, the Finns have higher taxes to support these and other services, than we do here in America. But the Finns also see tangible paybacks in the quality of their towns and cities.